Updated at 5:45 p.m. June 18, 2015
In a visit overshadowed by a mass shooting at a South Carolina church, President Barack Obama attended an afternoon fundraiser Thursday at the Pacific Palisades home of TV producer Chuck Lorre, then made his way to Beverly Hills for a second event benefiting the Democratic National Committee.
Obama arrived at Los Angeles International Airport around 2:20 p.m. aboard Air Force One, beginning a visit that would last less than 24 hours.
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After a short helicopter trip to Santa Monica Airport, Obama was taken by motorcade to Pacific Palisades. The Santa Monica (10) and San Diego (405) freeways were both closed in West Los Angeles to accommodate the lengthy motorcade — bringing traffic to a standstill not only on the freeways but on surrounding streets.
The roundtable discussion at Lorre’s house cost the roughly 30 attendees $16,700 each. The roughly one-hour event, which was closed to reporters, was billed as an “intimate, living room style event.”
The presidential motorcade then made its way toward Beverly Hills, winding along Mulholland Drive before arriving at the home of filmmaker Tyler Perry.
Tickets for the Perry event are priced from $2,500 to attend a reception to $33,400, the maximum allowable donation to a national party committee, which includes admission to a reception, where Obama will speak, and dinner and a photo with the president.
Tickets for the dinner are priced at $20,000 per couple. The price to attend the reception and have a photo taken with Obama is $10,000, according to an invitation obtained by City News Service.
One pool reporter is being allowed to attend.
Coincidentally, the front-runner in the race to succeed Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, also was to be in the Southland for a fundraiser Thursday.
Clinton’s fundraiser will be at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, with tickets priced from $1,000 to $2,700, the maximum individual contribution for a candidate seeking his or her party’s presidential nomination.
Clinton will also conduct three fundraisers Friday on Los Angeles’ Westside — a 12:30 p.m. luncheon at the Beverly Hills home of Westfield Corp. co-CEO Peter Lowy and his wife Janine; a 5 p.m. event at the home of HBO executive Michael Lombardo and husband Sonny Ward; and a 7 p.m. event at the home of actor Tobey Maguire and his wife Jennifer Meyer.
Tickets for each event are priced at $2,700.
Ninio Fetalvo, spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said Obama and Clinton should be focusing on the “concerns of everyday Americans in the Golden State” instead of “causing multiple days of traffic jams for fundraising with celebrities and out-of-touch elitists.”
“Hillary Clinton needs to answer the serious questions regarding the foreign donations to her family’s foundation and her secret email server,” he said. “As her avoidance tour continues, it’s no wonder why Americans don’t trust her.”
The visit is Obama’s 22nd to Los Angeles and Orange counties as president.
Obama has attended fundraisers during 18 of his previous 21 visits to Los Angeles and Orange counties as president, attending 32 fundraisers in Los Angeles County on those trips, occasionally attending multiple fundraisers during the same visit.
Through the seventh years of their administrations, Bill Clinton conducted 42 fundraisers in the region, George W. Bush nine and Ronald Reagan eight, according to research by Brendan J. Doherty, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, for his book “The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign.”
George H.W. Bush conducted 10 and Jimmy Carter six during their single terms, according to Doherty.
“Clinton’s presidency saw a marked increase in the number of fundraisers presidents headlined for the national committee and George W. Bush and Barack Obama have followed suit,” Doherty told City News Service.
“Presidents fundraise far less for state parties and for individual candidates than they used to. The causes are many, but one key is that the limits on contributions to political parties are higher than on contributions to individual campaigns.”
On Friday, comedian Marc Maron will interview Obama in the garage of his Highland Park home for his podcast “WTF with Marc Maron.”
“We think this is an opportunity to have an extended candid conversation, not necessarily about news of the day items, but I think this is going to be much more about areas of the president’s life that don’t always get reported in the news,” principal deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Los Angeles.
The podcast is scheduled to be uploaded Monday.
Obama will then leave Southern California, bound for the San Francisco area, where he will speak at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and fundraisers for the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The president is expected to return to Southern California on Saturday, spending the night in the Coachella Valley.
—City News Service